Rupert Murdoch has hinted that subscriptions for the Wall Street Journal online will be scrapped. His comments came only hours after the New York Times dropped charges for premium (or at any rate what it believes are premium!) sections of its website.

The Journal is often held up as a rare example of a paper with premium content that can afford to charge without losing many readers. It charges an annual $99.

Murdoch told a conference in New York that making the site free would help boost readership and revenues. “If you make it free, will it hurt the paper? – I don’t think so,” he said, adding: “That looks the way we’re going.”

(This NRO post was written on Wednesday, but because of a technical hitch, is only being posted now.)